This is a similar run to my last one with a couple major improvements. The initial ghost section actually doesn’t require you to kill any ghosts. More than half of the time the ghosts back off after passing through the first door. I was also more aggressive in the final section.

I lost some time with the Hunters and when the Oliphant got stuck near the end of the highway. Otherwise I would have been under 30 minutes.

I never considered speed running this mission until I realized my first successful LASO run was only a few minutes off the current record. I knew a few places I had been overly patient, so I decided to give it a shot.

There are a few places that could definitely be improved upon; the first ghost section, and the last round of brutes in the final section just to name a couple.

Most of what I have to add didn’t work out in this run. I’m going back to try to beat my time and add in these parts. Hopefully I’ll have a new post soon!

Nothing you can do to speed up the main part of this mission.
The most time you can save is done at the final fight. Due to having two people, this can be done quicker than only having one.
~Dark Devastation

Did you feel that there only being 30 seconds between the Legendary and Easy Times for Coastal Highway was too little? Good news! Now it’s nearly a minute!

The most frustrating part of Coastal is that the vast majority of the level is gated, with a minimum time determined by the speed of the Oliphant. If it weren’t for that you could get through this level very quickly indeed!

On Easy difficulty, there isn’t much of a threat to either yourself or the Oliphant so essentially you have to entertain yourself while waiting for it to catch up; I tried to do this through most of the level by getting splatters or using slightly different means to dispatch the minimal opposition. Like giving Buck an FRG!

Actually, it saves a bit of time giving it to him now, rather than at the Firefight area. The opposition isn’t such that you need the combination of his (sub-par) turret skills and your epic driving skills to get through.

Ultimately, I felt the tank was a bit overkill on the last few segments, so grabbed another guass ‘hog along the way instead. It’s also useful to have one anyway, for the very last section of the highway, so you can speed down the final ramp.

That massive slowdown in the video at 14:35 in the video actually is in game. It’s a fairly regular occurance when speed running this level and I believe it has to do with the ‘hog overlapping with the invisible barrier which spawns to block the way back to the highway; so thats why I grenaded it.

On the first wave, the Pistol is only good at headshots (which it is really good at) but when those Grunts got away, it would have been much more valuable to have a Carbine instead. I remember to pick one up after that awfulness.

Oh, and I get 2 Killionaires in this run :)

–Main improvements–
As said, since much of this level is gated, the main improvements have to come at the start or end of the level. The start is already optimised since its just a straight-line run. The time saved came from the fight at the end where I had a much tighter strategy; essentially spawn-killing the Brutes and Grunts by getting in close and using the Rockets.

I kinda messed up on the second wave a little and had my rocket locations out of whack. Fortunately I don’t think I lost too much time there.

–Room for improvement?–
Not much; just minor optimisations on the final fight. Unless you could find a way through the doors early! Anyone got a Forklift handy?

Stats – 533,286 points scored with 6 Gold skulls on and 1 Silver in 23:28 for a 2x time multiplyer. 188 kills were made. No penalties taken. Tool of Destruction was the Scorpian tank with 68 kills. Most enemies killed was Grunt Infantry. The most earned medal was the Headshot medal; 31 times. While the most lucrative was the Invincible and Splatter Spree medals which earned 13,513 and 13,512 points respectively.

–

Are you tired of seeing me just rushing past enemies or being a pansy and letting Buck and Dare do the work on Coastal Highway? Well, this run should be right up your street!

This is my second score run for HSH, and also my second Half-a-Million pointer. Making me an ODST Millionaire with only 2 of the levels done!

Its crucial to preserve as much as of the time bonus as possible, as this can easily double or even triple your points. As such, I still basically run through the first section, only making a minor detour to grab a Rocket Launcher to deliver a couple of explosive punches into the Brutes’ lines. In the end, I still had a minute and a half of my 2x time bonus left, so an improvement would be to mop up the enemies here as well; you’ve got plenty of Rockets.

On the first section of the highway, I hop out for some delicious headshot style-medal bonuses on the first gaggle of grunts, then do my best to rack up some splatters. This’ll become my main-stay for the majority of the Warthog sections: splatter as many as I can, while Buck cleans up the rest.

I rather messed up on the Drones though; that Rocket was meant to be a serious multi-kill. If I’d have gotten set up there earlier; I might have been able to double rocket the whole lot. Definite potential for a Killionnaire there. Buck kind of sucks as a gunner as well; this is pre-Halo: Reach! They don’t overheat! Hold that trigger down! Eventually I get frustrated and just do it myself! Yes Buck, I am a much better shot than you.

With the Ghosts, Buck takes way too long on the turret, and is liable to killing just the driver. I opt to rocket them instead. Though I probably should have left Buck more behind cover: I swear he steals some of my kills.

In the first Guass section, Buck kills a lot of drivers, and not many vehicles: ARGH! I found it too dangerous to use the Guass cannon myself, but if could have, ooooh the points.

The last Guass section is difficult anyway. Trying to balance survival and killing stuff was tough. I didn’t make much of a dent and quickly had to bail out. Fortunately; I got the Scorpian soon after :)

The multi-kill bonuses in ODST are pretty insane; if you could manage to put one shot into each Banshee, and then down them all one after another, you’d get an epic amount of points.

On the next section, not killing the Phantoms is completely intentional; you get way more points for killing the Ghosts than you do for killing the Phantoms. Perhaps, if you brought them to where a single shot would kill them, you could use them to increase your multi-kill multiplyer after you kill one of the Ghosts. You won’t be able to get all of them though. Oh, running over that Shade turret would have gotten you a double-splatter medal multiplyer. Remember that. I simply didn’t want Buck to kill the gunner first.

In the final section of the Highway with enemies, you can actually get a couple of Killionnaires here. The window, including time between your Scorpian shots, is very narrow, so I missed it this time. The oppurtunity exists however!

In the next couple of sections, there are no enemies. Well, at least none you can actually kill :(

I simply grab the transport ‘hog to speed down the last ramp.

Buck messed up my double assassination on the Grunts in the last area, so thats why I roll my screen at him!

I’m not sure quite why I gave Dare my RL. I was trying to speed up the last battle I guess. But with what the final time ended up being, I needn’t have bothered, and she steals kills anyway!

The Jackal and Hunter wave was a bit awful, I have to say. I was a bit paranoid about the jackal snipers killing me, then theres was that stubborn shield jackal, and Buck and Dare couldn’t seem to do anything to the Hunters! A bit of quick thinking meant I could secure the kills for myself, so not all was lost.

The last wave, the Brutes, could have been done with a few more multi-kills. Alas, I hadn’t figured out good placement for multi-killing them with the rockets by the time of this run, and I was also tired after 20 minutes; not many runs are this long ya know?

Coastal Highway is a rather time consuming level to iterate runs on. Once you have the first 14 minutes down, that is all gated, there is only room for rather minor improvements in the last 5 minute fight. Fortunately, while waiting for Reach, I had plenty of time over the Summer to iterate to my heart’s content.

At the end of it all, I got a rather nice run of Coastal Highway on Legendary in 19:32. Just a minute longer than my equivalent Easy difficulty run. Check the run for some sweet multi-kills and a sound highway strategy that meant, even if the first 14 minutes of the run was time consuming, it wasn’t particularly frustrating.

This run is slightly older than the Legendary difficulty record for Solo Coastal Highway, and as such isn’t quite as well planned. Still though, the easier difficulty means I still manage to gain a few seconds on the later Legendary run, since I was able to cut things a bit finer and be a bit more aggressive in some sections. Final time is 19:27.

Heres a run I did a couple of months ago to make sure I had a nice full set on Coastal Highway before Reach. The fight at the end of the Highway could use some work; its not quite as optimised as it could be. But the final time of 19:01 still fits nicely in between the times of Easy and Heroic difficulty runs.

[flv]http://files.mythica.org/halo/highimpacthalo/highspeed/ODST/CoastalHwy/ODSTCoastalHighwayZeroShot22-20RCMaster.mp4[/flv]
“You’ll never get that time“, “theres no way you can make that“, “thats as good as its gonna get.” These, and phrases like them, are uttered often in the world of speedrunning. Fortunately, we often prove ourselves, and each other, dead wrong.

For the Vidmaster Challenge: Classic achievement in Halo 3: ODST, Uplift Reserve is the top of everybody’s list for levels to try. You get vehicles for the whole level, a steady stream of allies to man them if you want, and easy access to heavy weapons. Thanks to readily available Ghosts early on and some agreeable inclines of cliff-faces, it can also be a very quick achievement too. Our own record is just 2:26.

For most, trying to get the achievement on other levels doesn’t even cross their mind. For those that do, its either ruled out as too hard, or impossible. However, we’re not a afraid to take that challenge on! So, today, you get to see the Vidmaster Challenge: Classic achievement done on a new level. One that takes nearly 10 times the amount of time as Uplift Reserve, and more than a hundred additional enemies to deal with.

Let me talk you through it:

During my crusade to nail down some ODST runs before Reach falls, and to celebrate High Speed Halo’s New Hawtnes, my attention landed on the granddaddy: Coastal Highway. I’ve worked my way through speedrunning all the difficulty levels (bar Mythic, haha!) and learned a lot about this level in the process. Once Legendary was conquered, and the vicious combo dual-FRG combo of Dare and Buck at the end meant only minimal player input was actually needed there, I wondered about doing a zero shot run. With a few tactics borrowed from Mythic runs of the level, a few choice grenade throws and an extended ride in an already battered Guass Warthog instead of the Tank, I made a fairly decent 22:20.

From there, I raised my sights higher still: I could do it without the shooting, what about the grenades? The route for the driving section was already sorted: just use Buck as a mobile turret. The tree waves of firefight weren’t a problem either: dual FRGs FTW! The only problem was the start…

Well, with a swift and daring route, and a bit of luck manipulation* I was able to squeeze my way right by the main body of enemies there to a healthpack. Then I keep running past to a second set of health-packs, and warp my allies to my position.

On the highway, its a mix daring rushes, sit-outs, splatters, opportunistic weapon theiving and a few vehicle boardings for good measure. Buck even shows a rare moment of tactical know-how by taking out the first FRG Grunt while there are still other targets! Giving said FRG to Buck proves a useful method for the first set of Ghost. After that its Guass time! Well, in between Buck’s incessant chatter…

At the end, placing some boxes in the way of the doors helps keep enemies out of there (if they ever get that far) but more importantly: keeps Dare outside and in the fight. She has a nasty habit of going inside to say hi to Virgil.

Final time clocks in at 22:07. 13 seconds faster than the Zero Shot that almost got shown instead of this run today. Without a single grenade either!

Now, what other ODST missions can we do Classic style? ;)

—-

Fun fact: one of the death-inclusive practice runs I got on the way to this run, featured an Oliphant-launched Truck smashing into the back of my head. Sending me flying forward into the explosion of a spare ‘hog!

Vidmaster Challenge: Classic criteria: Finished any level solo on Legendary, on LIVE, with no shots fired or grenades thrown.

Because in this run there were no grenades thrown either, this is also the Vidmaster Challenge: Classic Achievement run for this level.

“You’ll never get that time“, “theres no way you can make that“, “thats as good as its gonna get.” These, and phrases like them, are uttered often in the world of speedrunning. Fortunately, we often prove each other, and ourselves, dead wrong.

For the Vidmaster Challenge: Classic achievement in Halo 3: ODST, Uplift Reserve is the top of everybody’s list for levels to try. You get vehicles for the whole level, a steady stream of allies to man them if you want, and easy access to heavy weapons. Thanks to readily available Ghosts early on and some agreeable inclines of cliff-faces, it can also be a very quick achievement too. Our own record is just 2:26.

For most, trying to get the achievement on other levels doesn’t even cross their mind. For those that do, its either ruled out as too hard, or impossible. However, we’re not a afraid to take that challenge on! So, today, you get to see the Vidmaster Challenge: Classic achievement done on a new level. One that takes nearly 10 times the amount of time as Uplift Reserve, and gives you more than a hundred additional enemies to deal with.

Let me talk you through it:

During my crusade to nail down some ODST runs before Reach falls, and to celebrate High Speed Halo’s New Hawtnes, my attention landed on the granddaddy: Coastal Highway. I’ve worked my way through speedrunning all the difficulty levels (bar Mythic, haha!) and learned a lot about this level in the process. Once Legendary was conquered, and the vicious dual-FRG combo of Dare and Buck at the end meant only minimal player input was actually needed there, I wondered about doing a zero shot run. With a few tactics borrowed from Mythic runs of the level, a few choice grenade throws and an extended ride in an already battered Guass Warthog instead of the Tank, I made a fairly decent 22:20.

From there, I raised my sights higher still: I could do it without the shooting, what about the grenades? The route for the driving section was already sorted: just use Buck as a mobile turret. The tree waves of firefight weren’t a problem either: dual FRGs FTW! The only problem was the start…

Well, with a swift and daring route, and a bit of luck manipulation* I was able to squeeze my way right by the main body of enemies there to a healthpack. Then I keep running past to a second set of health-packs, and warp my allies to my position. I didn’t even lose that much time compared to the normal route straight through the centre.

On the highway, its a mix daring rushes, sit-outs, splatters and a few vehicle boardings for good measure. Buck even shows a rare moment of tactical know-how by taking out the first FRG Grunt while there are still other targets! I oppurtinisticly thieve a couple of FRGs from the Covenant along the way. Giving one to Buck proves a useful method for the first set of Ghosts. After that its Guass time! Well, in between Buck’s incessant chatter…

At the end, placing some boxes in the way of the doors helps keep enemies out of there (if they ever get that far) but more importantly: keeps Dare outside and in the fight. She has a nasty habit of going inside to say ‘hi’ to Virgil.

Final time clocks in at 22:07. 13 seconds faster than the Zero Shot that almost got shown instead of this run today. Without a single grenade either!

Now, what other ODST missions can we do Classic style? ;)

—-

*Keep restarting until it works :)

Fun fact: one of the death-inclusive practice runs I got on the way to this run, featured an Oliphant-launched Truck smashing into the back of my head. Sending me flying forward into the explosion of a spare ‘hog!

Vidmaster Challenge: Classic criteria: Finished any level solo on Legendary, on LIVE, with no shots fired or grenades thrown.

Because of the stricter requirements of Vidmaster Challenge: Classic, this also qualifies as the Zero Shot run.